The Overweening Generalist is largely about people who like to read fat, weighty "difficult" books - or thin, profound ones - and how I/They/We stand in relation to the hyper-acceleration of digital social-media-tized culture. It is not a neo-Luddite attack on digital media; it is an attempt to negotiate with it, and to subtly make claims for the role of generalist intellectual types in the scheme of things.

Overweening Generalist

Thursday, May 7, 2015

NPR's version of the story likens it to something out of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum,which seemed like a decent riff, but I had immediately thought of the w.a.s.t.e underground postal system in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, a postal system that has operated successfully for centuries and under the radar of The State.

There's still a lot we don't know about these three Masonic police-persons. Unlike those silently awaiting Trystero's Empire, they eventually introduced themselves to the cops in Santa Clarita, a noted home of many LAPD officers. They had enough police equipment and accoutrements to "pass" as cops. How? I'd like to know.

This Pynchon symbolic meme has long had legs

This story seems made up by a Pynchonian mind, but so far it looks real. Is it a cargo cult of some sort? They seem to have pulled the 3000 year old Knights Templar dealio out of thin air. This made me think: performance art? More like guerrilla ontology. Or, operationally put: this is currently acting like guerrilla ontology in the nervous system of the present writer.

Unless there's some bizarro small number groupthink led by a charismatic goin' on - many, if not all, religions start this way - I'm not sure what to make of it. They seem to have not practiced any real police work, although if you Google "impersonating police officer" you can read articles for days on end. In Latin America and other parts of the globe, where there's a narco-state or some form of military fascism, often real or fake cops knock on the door of some "dangerous" journalist, book writer, or activist, and they're never seen again. So pretending to be a cop is an under-appreciated thing. But these Masons don't seem nefarious or after "I'm a bad ass you'll have to reckon with" kick. Nor do they seem to be trying to deal or score sex or drugs, although maybe we shall see.

It gets better when you realize one of the three was on staff for the California State Attorney General Kamala Harris.

There's something so cosmically hilarious about this it really made the day of an asthmatic down with a nasty case of bronchitis (me).

The line that they were "here first" smacks of either Art or Delusion, if there is any difference.

I was also reminded of Robert Anton Wilson's lines of thought about mass hallucination and things like money: the Mob can print $100 bills that take a group of experts to tell that they're not "really" money; the Federal Reserve can print money and it's okay. Only their paper is "real." Or: Andy Warhol signing his autograph on Campbell's Soup cans bought from the supermarket, immediately changing the can of soup to a Warhol with some value. How Elmyr got away (for a time) with forging all sorts of famous Modernist artists, and art "experts" were fooled.

The idea of a non-"legitimate" police force can be very serious. History is rife with brutal, fascistic, racist thugs pretending to act in the interests of the locals. But these Masonic cats seem to have done no harm, and in the glaring light being shone on "legitimate" taxpayer-funded Gestapo-cops all over Unistat over the past two years, I think I'd rather take my chances with a self-styled Masonic force with a "bloodline" (!) and no record of fascist, racist mayhem.

(Or: a "legit" cop, well-trained and sensitive to community standards and needs, with the use of force as last resort: gold! That's what I think most anarchistic communities would want...with total accountability for their status. And far far far less a number of laws to maintain. Is someone selling LSD? Okay, it better be up to community standards, pal!)

bogus, sexy, dreamboat cop "Damon"

I hope more information comes out about this police force. My first guess is they're a very creative repressed people's movement, who want the feeling of dignity and participation in some noble process. And maybe free food at restaurants.

I hope they don't turn out to be criminals on the grift, 'cuz that would just be boring and ruin my buzz.

Finally, the Walter Mitty in me (and today I have a fever) wants to find out this is just the very tip of the iceberg: there really ARE multiple Masonic police forces, interested in Brotherhood and science. Ya never know! We Await Silently Trystero's Empire! DEATH = Don't Even Antagonize The Horn!

About Me

I have furore scribendi which veers into verborrhea. My favorite media (anything that mediates between our sensoria and what is outside our skin) are, in order: books, Internet, CDs (!), DVDs, TV, clothes. I like hoppy beer and New World zins, Indian and Thai food, John Coltrane, JS Bach and heavy metal, the Lakers and Angels, redwood trees, hiking and yoga, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, heretical ideas and pornography. If you want me to write for you, for money, contact rmjon23[at]aol[dot] com. You can also drop a line and say hi, but please be nice 'cuz I'm a delicate creature of Nature.

Sir Isaiah Berlin

"An intellectual is a person who wants ideas to be as interesting as possible. Unless you think the ideas you are discussing are interesting to you, whatever you may believe yourself, the history of ideas will remain a catalogue of unexamined doctrines, terribly boring and unreal."

-Isaiah Berlin, in conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo

Leonardo da Vinci

Epitome of Renaissance Man

Athanasius Kircher (c.1600-1680)

The last universal polymath? The last man to know everything? Egyptologist, archaeologist, mathematician, vulcanologist, physicist, biologist.